Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo on an upper arm showing a woman's face in a mask above a closed-eyed mask, framed by roses and leaves.

Mask faces and roses on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a stylised female face wearing a mask, with a second mask below it showing closed eyes and a downturned mouth, both with tear-like drops. Three roses and dark leaves with scrolling swirls frame the faces, and bold outlines are combined with smooth grey shading. The design is in black and grey ink and fills the upper arm, photographed from the side against a plain background.

Neo-trad Upper arm Mask Woman Face Rose Leaves Swirl Tear

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp is nearly out, and you will want to hear this before the rain gets into the sawdust. The Rose and Lantern Circus had three tents the year my mother was born, and by the winter of the flood it had one patched tent, a lion with no teeth, and a pair of painted masks kept in a tin trunk under Haskell's bed.

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Haskell, the ringmaster, would not sell those masks, though men came from Leeds with cheques. His wife had carved them years before. The comedy face had roses curled round its brow, and the tragedy face had its eyes shut and a fine black bead of paint running from each lid. She used to say the laughing one was for full houses and the weeping one was for the nights the crowd stayed home, and that a good show needed both on the same bill.

The council wanted the field for a car park by spring. On the last night, Haskell's granddaughter Nell walked the wire without a net, the way she always had, and when she reached the far pole she turned and put the comedy mask on her face. The few people left on the benches laughed at a woman who was plainly about to fall, and she stepped off the wire into the dark and was gone before anyone could stop laughing. Haskell never said where she went. He only kept the tragedy mask, and he wore it to the end of every show after that, weeping for both of them.

If you drive out there now there is a car park with white lines and a machine that takes coins. But I am told a rose still pushes up through the tarmac near the old ring, red, and nobody has the heart to pull it out. Mind the step on your way. The lamp is out.